Sure it's a right. Everyone has the right to go out and get a job. It gets silly when people start thinking they should have jobs handed to them on a platter.

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Nope, and you lose points for using emotionally-loaded language like "handed on a platter". Everyone has the right to have a job that would provide for them. Otherwise, it's not a right, it's indeed a privilege.

You start taxing the rich, putting punitive regulations on them, you know who you're hurting? The middle class.

It's the successful people who open businesses and hire dozens of people and provide jobs. Overtaxing them is just going to stifle businesses, lose jobs and you have less money. It's a novel concept, but the less you infringe upon them, the more jobs they make and the more people you have paying into the system, thus you have increased tax revenue.

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Yeah, because it worked so well five years ago. Less regulation, less supervision, less taxes. We all know how it turned out. But I guess people have short memories.

Planning, not luck. I'd read in the financial news that the company was expanding it's work force, I had deliberately built up a excellent work history at other jobs, I had a spotless driving record, I applied for every position they had open. And after I heard that they would be filling some positions that same day, I sat in the outer office for 6 hours (wide awake now) where the boss and the girl from HR would see me ... with work gloves sticking out of my front pocket.

Protecting your community and nation, military service is the country's oldest (and yes most dangerous) form of public service. Start your adult life and change your direction. Looks great on a future job resume. Educational benefits. They do pay you, feed you, house you. VA administration makes it real easy to get your first home. If you join at age 18 you can be retired from the military at age 38. Comes with life long medical care.

And you cease being unemployed.

President Obama said in his inaugural address that those in military service "embody the spirit of service—a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves."

Planning, not luck. I'd read in the financial news that the company was expanding it's work force, I had deliberately built up a excellent work history at other jobs, I had a spotless driving record, I applied for every position they had open. And after I heard that they would be filling some positions that same day, I sat in the outer office for 6 hours (wide awake now) where the boss and the girl from HR would see me ... with work gloves sticking out of my front pocket.

I had made myself "hireable."

Minimum wage where I live is just over $1,400 a month now. A few years back I lived with 5 roommates in a 2 bedroom apartment.

Protecting your community and nation, military service is the country's oldest (and yes most dangerous) form of public service. Start your adult life and change your direction. Looks great on a future job resume. Educational benefits. They do pay you, feed you, house you. VA administration makes it real easy to get your first home. If you join at age 18 you can be retired from the military at age 38. Comes with life long medical care.

And you cease being unemployed.

President Obama said in his inaugural address that those in military service "embody the spirit of service—a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves."

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You may have researched the company and sat around for six hours; you were still lucky that they didn't simply say "sorry" at the end of it and cast you off. Being hireable doesn't guarantee success in finding work. And many other people wouldn't have had the "excellent work history" you possessed, perhaps because they hadn't been able to reliably find work before then? To say nothing of those suffering psychological conditions that might make them less suitable for many positions. If you were able to "deliberately" build up a great record, then you were doing rather well, relatively speaking. And good for you, of course.

As for the military pitch, well, this is where you and I differ, isn't it? A situation wherein people feel that their best option for eventual self-sufficiency is joining the military and therefore legally surrendering much of their initiative and freedom strikes me as somewhat twisted reasoning, and essentially exploitative. Serve the government and then you'll get the ability to build a life. Somehow I don't think that's how its supposed to work. Perhaps if more of the many billions of dollars the US spends on its military were channelled into housing, social support networks, etc, people could live comfortably without having to sell themselves into service to do so?

I don't mean to be rude, T'Girl, because you're a very pleasant member of the board, so please don't take this the wrong way, but you talk about having to apply for every job available, having to sit for hours in the hopes that someone would see you, of living with five people in a dwelling meant for two....and this is somehow a source of pride? Don't you think that it shouldn't be that way?

It's the successful people who open businesses and hire dozens of people and provide jobs. Overtaxing them is just going to stifle businesses, lose jobs and you have less money. It's a novel concept, but the less you infringe upon them, the more jobs they make and the more people you have paying into the system, thus you have increased tax revenue. To say nothing of less people taking handouts.

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I thought in this age the "successful people" were the ones laying people off, "trimming the fat" so they say. They are hoarding their cash, not expanding their business.

T'Girl said:

Minimum wage where I live is just over $1,400 a month now.

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I don't know where you live but where I live there is no monthly minimum wage. Where I live the minimum wage is less than that assuming actual full-time employment.

Fast food is usually hiring, and (if you're under 26 years) the military is alway recruiting.

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Neither platitude is true. Besides doesn't the Pentagon want a smaller army and are actually anticipating layoffs? In either case they only hire as much as they want, they don't hire anyone anytime unless they get desperate.

embody the spirit of service—a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves

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But aren't you suggesting the exact opposite? Join the army to get yourself a job?

I like how the mindset today is that being able to provide for yourself and not mooch off others makes you "privileged"... just shows what direction our society is heading in.

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It blows my mind that there are people out there on a good wage, myself included at the moment, who protest against a rise in tax because money is needed to help people who are less well off than me, couldn't otherwise afford medical care etc.

Seriously, what could you need MORE money for? It blows my mind when people on incomes in the hundreds of thousands want more.

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It blows my mind that people consider being successful a vice. That we villify the people that make something of themselves because they work hard and have "more" than someone else. We should celebrate everyone being successful and the great country we have that lets them do that.

But this constant call to tax and punish the rich? What is that even about? Just people pointing their finger at someone else as if they're to blame for their lot in life.

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The majority of the 'rich' are not that way because they work particularly hard. Wealth tends to generate more wealth, little effort involved. The notion that the rich are rich because they deserve it is often a way of justifying privilege and inequality. Pointing at a self made milionnaire (and coincidentally a great employer) like Richard Branson does not prove that all of the rich are deserving.

With power comes responsibility - how many employers genuinely care about their staff and make efforts to pay them as much as the business can afford ? Too many times the 'American Dream" looks like little more than a desire to be the exploiter rather than the exploited.

I agree with you that there are people out there who want the best jobs handed to them without having to earn them.

But unfortunately, among the people who are working hard, there are many forces other than just merit that determine your fate. Some people were never given access to education, some people had to take care of their families and didn't have an opportunity to become educated. Some people just don't have the social skills to advertise their merits. And, success begets success, failure begets failure. The easiest way to get a good job is to already have a good job. One failure or one gap on your resume will brand you forever.

It's also heavily implied in this episode that anybody found without means to provide for themselves is immediately shipped into the districts without recourse or path to release.

There's a difference between saying 'Hard work should be rewarded, jobs should not be handed on a silver platter' and saying 'Maybe we shouldn't treat people as subhuman because they're having a bad run.'

The majority of the 'rich' are not that way because they work particularly hard. Wealth tends to generate more wealth, little effort involved. The notion that the rich are rich because they deserve it is often a way of justifying privilege and inequality. Pointing at a self made milionnaire (and coincidentally a great employer) like Richard Branson does not prove that all of the rich are deserving.

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Yes and no. Yeah the rich person's son doesn't have to interview for his VP job, and you are de-facto a serious presidential candidate for no other qualification than having the same name as a previous president. But if you take two average people born in the same situation, one of them works hard and the other does not, the one that works hard will probably have the better job.

It's also heavily implied in this episode that anybody found without means to provide for themselves is immediately shipped into the districts without recourse or path to release.

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Sisko and Bashir were taken to one of the Sanctuary Districts because they lacked ID's, indicating (apparently) that they were homeless.

Once in the district Sisko and Bashir are assumed to be "gimmes." people in need of employment and a place to stay. The district does provide a job placement service (which is hampered by a bad economy).

Prior to about forty years ago, homeless with mental impairment could be remove from the streets to a treatment environment and held there, where some improved and some did not. In the early 1970's (in America) mental patents gain the legal ability to leave anytime they wished to. The court system considered this to be a right, For many this meant living on the streets, isolated from treatment.

Bashir notes that some of the people in the district are mentally challenged. These are the people referred to as the "dims." The police initially think Sisko and Bashir are dims, owing to their confusing statements.

While people with criminal records are supposed to be excluded from the districts, there is gang activity, these are the "ghosts."

It's implied that if Sisko and Bashir possessed identification, regardless that they had no money or jobs, that they would never have been escorted to the district.

And many other people wouldn't have had the "excellent work history" you possessed, perhaps because they hadn't been able to reliably find work before then? If you were able to "deliberately" build up a great record, then you were doing rather well, relatively speaking. And good for you, of course.

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I wonder how her built her "excellent work history" if she said that she it was her first job and she had "no experience" in the post before.

A situation wherein people feel that their best option for eventual self-sufficiency is joining the military and therefore legally surrendering much of their initiative and freedom strikes me as somewhat twisted reasoning, and essentially exploitative. Serve the government and then you'll get the ability to build a life. Somehow I don't think that's how its supposed to work.

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Especially when she always declared that "government is the problem", that it can't fix anything, and we'd all do better in libertarian paradise?

Isn't it amazing how all her stories fit the discussion at hand? And how the details keep changing to keep them relevant? I'm not saying she's making up those stories, but I'm not sure they are really really true, you know.

I wonder how her built her "excellent work history" if she said that she it was her first job and she had "no experience" in the post before.

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I possessed no prior experience in the field of being a professional driver, or making deliveries. Learning to operate the "bread trucks" in city traffic was the hardest part of the job, although usually I was just in a van.

Yes, of course. Self-sufficiency is to be despised, if you can't find work there's always someone or something else to blame and whatever you do, don't take responsibility for your own actions and your own life. Government does that.

This whole thing really isn't that complicated, I don't know why it's such a contentious point....

1) When the economy contracts, the poverty rate increases because there is less money being paid in wages.
2) When the poverty rate increases, it can cause the economy to contract because fewer people are spending money beyond the essentials (assuming they can even spend on that).
3) Due to 1 and 2, a contracting economy and increasing poverty can lead into a self-perpetuating downward spiral.
4) Due to 3, a system is needed to break this cycle and ensure those in poverty have at least a minimum amount of spending money. Government programs provide this safeguard.
5) Due to 4, taxation is necessary to offset government spending.
6) Due to 5 and the fact that an expanding poverty rate is part of the hypothetical problem, it doesn't make sense to tax the poor or the middle class who might be pushed into poverty by that taxation. There is only one group left able to bear the burden in this case: the wealthy.
7) When the economy contracts, even those who were well-off before can be negatively affected.
8) Due to 6 and 7, taxation of the wealthy to provide basic benefits to those in poverty can aid in allowing the wealthy to remain wealthy, when they might otherwise fall into the middle class or lower during an economic downturn.

What's so hard to understand? Maybe in good times the equation is different, but government social programs are not about good times: they are about mitigating how bad the bad times can get.

Apparently large amounts of never ending borrowing is necessary for this process as well. Borrowing to be payed back in part by people in their twenties, people too young to vote, people yet unborn. Too bad for them huh?

I wonder how her built her "excellent work history" if she said that she it was her first job and she had "no experience" in the post before.

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I possessed no prior experience in the field of being a professional driver, or making deliveries. Learning to operate the "bread trucks" in city traffic was the hardest part of the job, although usually I was just in a van.

Yes, of course. Self-sufficiency is to be despised, if you can't find work there's always someone or something else to blame and whatever you do, don't take responsibility for your own actions and your own life. Government does that.

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You've got nothing, don't you? Learn how to build a good argument, then come back to us.

Yes, of course. Self-sufficiency is to be despised, if you can't find work there's always someone or something else to blame and whatever you do, don't take responsibility for your own actions and your own life. Government does that.

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You've got nothing, don't you? Learn how to build a good argument, then come back to us.

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How so? You might not agree with him, but R.Star does have his points down.

You go out the door, it's wealthy bossman's fault. You're out of work for months or years, it not because you neglected to prepare a fall back job, it's because no one will hire you for the only job you ever bothered to learn.

Because you're out of work, the rest of society has a collective obligation to send you money to live on every month. Heaven forbid you reduce your life style, move somewhere less expensive and take the night shift down at the burger hut.

If others don't wish to pony up (thru taxes), then they're the cheap ones. They're selfish. Of course you're not the selfish one for expecting their money. It's too bad if they want to retain what they earned through their own efforts, because you want a piece of it.

Yes, of course. Self-sufficiency is to be despised, if you can't find work there's always someone or something else to blame and whatever you do, don't take responsibility for your own actions and your own life. Government does that.

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You've got nothing, don't you? Learn how to build a good argument, then come back to us.

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How so? You might not agree with him, but R.Star does have his points down.

[Long-winded emotional blather]

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Talk about a strawman. "Self-sufficiency is to be despised", "someone or something else to blame", "don't take responsibility for your own actions and your own life", etc. You guy are arguing against things that nobody ever said.

So, selfless service to the community for the good of the people gets a big thumbs up when we're talking about joining the military, but selfless service for the good of the people when we're talking about the rich paying money into a system intending to keep everyone at a reasonable standard of living gets the big thumbs down? If you're encouraging people to risk their physical and mental health and surrender their legal independence to be part of "something greater than themselves", why can't you encourage the wealthy and successful to surrender some of their excess money to be part of "something greater", a far lesser sacrifice indeed?